External Storage Enclosures: Thunderbolt 3 vs USB-C with Photoshop

[Brad_Trent]

I just moved from a 2019 iMac to a Mac Studio M4 Max (2TB SSD, 64GB/16 Core). I have been working off a Sabrent USB-3.2 external docking station (https://sabrent.com/products/ds-sc4b?srsltid=AfmBOooS-DjNxD6zoL67XDT6TTJRhhftLQYBipfCAxXA4oTg8HIRx-N...) that holds my files. I do all processing (RAW files in Capture One) and retouching (Photoshop) off of the 7200rpm drives inside the Sabrent box. Would there be ANY speed advantage if I moved to a Thunderbolt 3 Storage Enclosure like the OWC ThunderBay 4 over my current USB-C box, or is the only way to take full advantage of the Thunderbolt speed bump to also work off of SSD drives? I'm guessing that the faster Thunderbolt docking station will not result in faster working speeds with my 7200rpm hard drives because the speed bottleneck is the hard drive itself, not the interface.

[ExUSA · Accepted solution]

Keep those drives for backup and yes go to SSD, there is a HUGE speed difference.